Since I apparently “lack nuance” and anything I say on this topic is automatically attacked, here is another piece from someone who actually understands how self defense works in the real world.

I posted Mike Williamson’s excellent piece earlier. Here is one from author Peter Grant. If you don’t know Peter, he has been everywhere and done everything. He’s been a warrior and a priest, and he has personally looked into the abyss of human evil.

When I read some testimonies about rape collected for prison rape awareness, at least one talked about concluding that becoming a rapist was key in preventing rape itself; another talked about committing rape after leaving prison.

So while it’s complicated, being raped *can* be a factor in becoming a rapist. But now that I think about it, that’s not Dave H’s point. His point is tautological: you cannot arrange for a rapist to be raped, without either creating a new rapist, or at least calling on the services of a rapist.

So, yeah, put ’em away or put ’em down, but don’t resort to creating rapists. (Particularly since prison rape is just as evil as any other form of rape!)

They may need to be taught what it feels like, but WE don’t need to learn what it feels like to teach them. And until the justics system visits serous consequences on prosecutors or police who fake ecidence or otherwise rig a trial, I must regretfully decline to support a death penalty.

Now, if an intended victim kills a rapist, THAT I’ll applaud.

To be clear; I’m not in favor of stopping executions. I’m in favor of putting any public official found to have railroaded an innocent man on trial. And if the innocent man was executed, they should be on trial for murder.

Seriously. People who are knowingly involved in false accusations of rape should be spending lots of time behind bars. It’s a very serious matter, and can lead to destroyed lives regardless of the outcome of the trial. Or, as my journalism teacher put it (I had a semester at the local Community College), if you found out your next-door neighbor had been found “Not Guilty” of child molestation charges, would you let him watch your kids?

Now with regards to rape, there are a tiny handful of times that I *am* in favor of capitol punishment for rape. Specifically, incidents like the one in which the US Supreme Court specifically declared execution to be Cruel and Unusual several years ago that involved an underage girl (she wasn’t even a pre-teen) who literally had her genitals destroyed by the man who raped her. I disagree with the Supreme Court on that one.

“To be clear; I’m not in favor of stopping executions. I’m in favor of putting any public official found to have railroaded an innocent man on trial. And if the innocent man was executed, they should be on trial for murder.”

Absolutely. That’s the problem with the Death Penalty that lots of people screaming for it fail to address. What do you do when trusted officials use their positions as a weapon?

Personally I have no faith in officialdom at all. I’m all for the rapist getting killed by his intended victim at the scene of the crime, and let the officials go pound salt.

That’s why women’s self defense and firearms generally are under propaganda attack from officialdom these days. If women are armed and dangerous, what do they need cops for?

The cop is not going to be there when it goes down, you can bet your life on that.

funny that. The leftoids only feel the innocent unborn and anyone the hate politically should be killed. They do whine ocasionally about other deaths they bemoan, but they also refuse to do the right thing to bring about stopping it.

Being raped once and attempted again I can say the only thing they need is executed. I was under age for both instances. One had been jailed twice already. That apparently did not do the trick. His family was also fine with his behavior. I don’t know how many he hurt, he finally died. But if what should have been done would have happened the first time he would not have hurt anyone else.

Nuance:
1. a subtle difference or distinction in expression, meaning, response, etc.
2. a very slight difference or variation in color or tone.

When leftists discredit an argument by saying that it lacks “nuance,” I like to tell them what the word means. Afterwards, I ask them why subtlety (synonymous with nuance) is important to addressing real world problems, and why directly discussing and facing real world problems is an invalid approach. It is a difficult question for them to answer, since they cannot say that directly discussing and facing real world problems is invalid, insignificant, or bad without them discrediting themselves.

Furthermore, I follow up with an inquiry about whether or not a head-on approach is ineffective. Most problems are extremely susceptible to a head-on, direct solution, and therefore nuance is usually unnecessary. Subtlety, I argue, is most often used by those who have evil, dishonest, or criminal intent, while a direct approach is most often used by good, honest, and law-abiding citizens. This knocks them for a loop, since by discrediting my argument by declaring it “lacks nuance,” they are essentially declaring that they have an ulterior motive, or that they are over-complicating and discarding a possible, simple, and direct solution. Ergo, they are the ones who have lost credibility.

Nuance is a card I love for them to play, because it’s so easy to shoot down.

Two superb articles that you’ve linked to; sadly, they are probably preaching to those who agree completely, but don’t have the skills to write such responses. Thanks for the links, I will pass them around.

ps. Thank you for the Grimnoir Chronicles; well-written science fiction in the old school, “what if, and then what happens?” That there may be more in that universe induces yearning on my part. Write, author, write! Please. 😉

Hines wrote:
“I’m not gonna waste a lot of time here, and I’ll preface this by noting that as someone who studies and teaches self-defense, I have nothing against people learning to protect themselves.”

You all know what that means, right? They’re both cismale gendernormative fascists! The One True Feminist Answer is that women shouldn’t have to learn self-defense, men have to be taught not to rape. So frankly, I dunno why we’re still listening to anything these hateful bigots have to say 😉

You know, one of those wise pieces of advice I learned about writing is that a one-star review means you’ve reached someone outside your target audience. Which is why I find the one-stars for Peter’s prison chaplain memoir so funny.

You see, he unapologetically and matter-of-factly lays out the fact that there are evil people in this world, and people who are criminally insane. The kind of people who end up in a federal max-security pen are not the reachable and teachable ignorant who merely need to know what’s appropriate to do.

So this review: “I have never been to prison, nor worked in a prison, so I guess I can’t really say how I’d feel in his place, but when he discusses ‘the criminal type’ or personality, he sounds …kind of disturbing. It made me uncomfortable.” Means that someone with absolutely no clue about the real world, and having never acknowledged that truly criminal and evil people are out there, got served a helping of truth. They didn’t like the bitter taste.

Honestly, can’t say I blame ’em; I didn’t like the bitter taste either, or the scars. But I’m not a Sacred Victim, ’cause I’ve moved on, and it’s just something else I’ve survived. I do find the indignation and the one-star reviews left as they run away pretty funny. Shine on, you special little snowflake. Me, I’ll carry concealed.

It really astounds me how people who describe themselves as progressive or liberal view the world. A good example of this is NPR host Terri Gross. She was once asked what she would do if she was mugged, “Well, I would hope to reason with them(the mugger)”.

For them it must be perfect as they envision perfection, and reality means that it can never be perfect in their view.

Like many who live in denial of the multi-faceted and multi-layered causes behind the patterns of human behaviors by simultaneously embracing it and denying it they live to be disappointed. The argument of ‘if only we raised these people out of the poverty of their lives (whatever form that might take in these do-gooder’s eyes, lack of money to low self-esteems) and properly explained that what they do when they rape is hurtful and wrong’ does nothing to stop those see no problem with using terror as a tool to obtain their goals, who may even enjoy that exercise of power over others.

I have been a victim of abuse and ine of the things I do to stop further assaults is volunteer with offenders in prisons. So I cannot say Never Any or All about terrible.criminals. Some do change. Many more do not. BUT the critical point which I wholeheartedly agree with is that sometimes the first and most koving thing to do for someone is to STOP THEM HURTING ANYONE by whayever means required.Guns and Martial Arts are great.keys to living in peace.

That made you want to shoot a rapist square in the dick? That seems a bit tame, my thoughts were running much much darker. I am glad that I am not actually a person capable of committing those types of acts. At least I am pretty sure/extremely hopeful I am not. I hope I don’t have to ever come across evil like that face to face, because I really prefer not to find out one way or the other.

One problem, not the only one, but a significant stumbling block, is we use the same words to mean different things. The definitions are skewed. The first time I came across this was about 20 years ago. Female came to the office to report that she had been raped. my case since I had been semi-specialized in sexual assault investigations at that point. I usually got the kid victim cases (which as a side note, never let an officer work those cases for more than a year or two or you’ll lose that investigator to burn out or something worse) She had been living somewhere on the left coast and had to come “home” for some reason, moving into the old family home which was her brother’s home now. After getting a lot of information that really did not pertain to the case but provided quite a bit of interesting context about her world view, it finally came out. She had overheard the children of her brother, 9 and 10 or so boy and girl, talking in the hallway outside her bedroom door. They were talking mean about her even though she really could not make out the words they were saying. Thus she had been Emotionally Raped and wanted criminal charges pressed against the children, the children taken out of the home, and her brother charged criminally as well. I had trouble making her understand that the facts of the case did not fit the charges she wanted, that emotional rape was not a criminal offense and there was not much I would be able to do with that case. Her words sounded like standard American English to a point, but she meant something 90 degrees off from what I understood the words to mean.
Granted, There are a lot of definitions, but one of the problems we do have, someone says Rape and to us, it means, generally, someone physically overpowered and then assaulted the victim physically and sexually for the gratification of the suspect.
To the SJW, rape can and often does mean Every Contact and Every Interaction between 2 people, usually male and female. If he looked at her, that’s rape, if he talked to her, if he looked down her blouse, or even glanced in the general direction of her upper torso, that’s rape. If he’s even a male in the vicinity of a female, that’s rape, if they are dating and he holds her hand or kisses her, that’s rape, if they are a married couple and have consensual sex that’s rape because marriage is property ownership and the female does not have a choice because of the male dominated culture and thus that is rape also. When dealing with, and I say dealing because there is no possibility of a true conversation with them, your wrong and that’s all there is to it. There is no common ground, no words or definitions in common and if by some chance you do find that the same word means the same thing to both of you, then the rules will be changed and the definitions worked over to change that.

On a different tangent, thanks, Larry, for introducing me to Peter Grant and his books. We really need to book bomb him someday. . . I’ve gone through the first two of his “Maxwell” saga, and am VERY impressed: Hornblower in space, written by a tag-team of Robert A. Heinlein and Horatio Alger. . . .

Thanks, Larry, for your kind words: and thanks to everyone who’s visited and commented on my blog. That thread has hit a new all-time high for a single post on my blog, with almost 3,000 visiting it directly since it was published. I’m sure most of them were from here.

Thanks, too, for your support for my books. I’m not in Larry’s league – yet! – but I’m trying hard, and it means a lot to me that so many of you saw fit to buy a book while you were browsing my blog. I appreciate it very much.

Larry, you’re not at LibertyCon this year, are you? Dot and I will be there. We’ll hoist a cold one in your general direction.

Just read Mr Grant’s post. Though it was not news to me, it still had a sobering effect. I’ve long been aware of the atrocities in Africa and to some extend, the cruel and savage measures drug lords use to intimidate and dominate. It is all just so sickening. Mr Grant’s post gave some much needed context to all the babble.

1) Stop illegalizing stupidity.
2) Put all the drug lords on trial. I’m sure almost all of them have done something other than “enabling stupidity”.
3) Education and rehabilitation. The two things that’ve been proven to stop harsh drug use. Not always, but more than anything else.

In your rush to make fun of things, I think you’ve overlooked some valid points. The sort of “evil personified” people described here are not responsible for all rapes. And even when they are, educating those around them could achieve something. And not just in pistol handling (though that is education).

I don’t know any remotely reliable sources of numbers, but here are some simplified stories the likes of which seem to occur pretty often, based on anecdote and rumor. In each of these stories, there is a false belief the correction of which would have prevented the rape but providing guns wouldn’t have. This isn’t to say there aren’t other cases where a gun would have done better, but the question is whether education is useful, not whether it’s the only useful thing.

Beliefs of the rapist:

Abdul believes that sex with a virgin cures AIDS. Or at least that there’s a chance. He has AIDS and can’t afford drugs, so he’ll grasp any straw. He doesn’t trust anyone to tell the truth about virginity, so he rapes a eight-year-old girl. He knows rape is wrong, but better evil than dead, right? Then both he and she die of AIDS.

Barbara believes that all men always want sex. So when a particularly attractive man is passed out drunk on her couch (it was that sort of party), she slips off his pants, handjobs him to hardness, applies a condom and starts riding him. She doesn’t understand why he’s so angry when he wakes up halfway through.

Carl believes that the most reliable way to tell if a woman wants sex is if her pupils dilate, since that’s unconscious (it is a sign, but it can also be a sign of other things) and that if she says “no”, she’s probably just playing coy (some women do that, but not all). Unfortunately, he’s making out with a woman who does not believe in playing coy, and her pupils are dilating from fear.

Delilah believes that there is a hierarchy of sex acts, and that consent to a greater one implies consent to all lessor ones. For example, if someone’s agreed to fuck, it’s safe to assume a kiss is welcome. Specifically, she believes that tying someone up and caning his ass (which her boyfriend has invited her to do) is greater than fellating him (which in fact he’s not ok with at all). By the time she starts this, however, he’s too deep in subspace to safeword. He’s very angry afterwards.

Beliefs of the victim:

Erin believes that all men are a hair-trigger away from being rapists, and that resistance only makes them more likely to hurt her. She’s nervously starting to make out with her boyfriend when he places a hand on her breast, which she actually isn’t ok with. Feeling her tense, he asks “is this ok?”. Thinking “This is it, I’m being raped, just shut down and endure” she stammers “anything you want.” Too enthused at the invitation to recognize the incongruous tone of voice he proceeds to do many things to her while she lies there.

Faramir believes that all authority figures are automatically out to get him (for simplicity’s sake, this is not true). One day, one of his teachers demands sex from him. When she sees that he doesn’t talk to the principal or the police or anyone like that, she proceeds to do it over and over again. (He can’t get a weapon either, because he doesn’t want to go to jail for murder, and he doesn’t believe a court would have any sympathy for a self-defense claim coming from him.)

Beliefs of the community:

Everyone in Suaveville believes that sexual negotiations should be done subtly: a deniable brush of skin here, a half-second glance there. To actually come out and say “wanna fuck” would be crude and mood-killing (and dressing it up in fancier language wouldn’t help). With practice, it is possible to tell who’s interested in doing what with you, but everyone makes mistakes (in which case, it is acceptable to say “no” and “sorry” out loud). Gwen is a sociopath who doesn’t care about who she hurts but does care about getting caught. So she ignores all subtle stop signals. This lets her do a lot of unwelcome things briefly. Furthermore, she learns the signs of men who will freeze up when uncomfortable (this happens). With them, she does whatever she wants. If anyone accuses her of rape, she just says “I thought he was into it — he should have said something” and everyone writes it off as an honest mistake.

Everyone in Haloville believes that people who are good in one way are probably good in most ways. In particular, anyone who creates great beauty cannot engage in great evil. Harry is a sociopath who doesn’t care about who he hurts but does care about getting caught. He is also a highly skilled artistic photographer. He routinely rapes his models secure in the knowledge that if they talk, he can rebut them by showing off his art.

The police in Idiotville are completely ignorant of rape-related forensics, or even of how to usefully question witnesses, so they are never able to prove anything beyond a reasonable doubt. Lots of sociopaths descend on the promise of safety from jail. (They do need to make sure their victims are unarmed, but it’s not too hard to figure out who is and isn’t.)

Everyone in Liberalville believes that guns are evil, so they ban them, and lots of sociopaths descend on the promise of an unarmed population of victims. (They do need to fear police, but there are ways to avoid leaving evidence.)

The fact that you believe any of the examples you listed above would have been solved by further education highlights exactly what is wrong with the “rape culture” meme, and the moral relativism subscribed to by most liberals in general

Let’s break down what is wrong with each one:

Abdul believes that sex with a virgin cures AIDS. Or at least that there’s a chance. He has AIDS and can’t afford drugs, so he’ll grasp any straw. He doesn’t trust anyone to tell the truth about virginity, so he rapes a eight-year-old girl. He knows rape is wrong, but better evil than dead, right? Then both he and she die of AIDS.

Um.. You do realize that, in this example, Abdul is exactly the sort of “evil personified” person that Peter Grant’s post describes, and which you are trying to argue is not responsible for most rapes, right? Anyone who believes that he was justified, based on his beliefs, needs to be taught about basic morals and ethics, NOT about rape. You said yourself that he knows rape is wrong. Teaching him about rape wouldn’t have made a damn bit of difference. Hell, even teaching him about AIDS and biology in general probably wouldn’t make much difference, because for someone with the “better evil than dead” mindset you’re describing, he would probably be willing to take that chance anyway, just in case.

I’m sorry, but there is no way for you to justify “better evil than dead.”

Barbara believes that all men always want sex. So when a particularly attractive man is passed out drunk on her couch (it was that sort of party), she slips off his pants, handjobs him to hardness, applies a condom and starts riding him. She doesn’t understand why he’s so angry when he wakes up halfway through.

Of all the examples you posted, this one comes the closest to not being bullshit. It’s still bullshit, though.

Sure, Barbara is wrong in her belief that all men want sex, all the time. (It’s a perfectly logical conclusion to draw based on available evidence, mind you, but it’s still wrong.) However, does she NOT know that sex with an unconscious person is wrong? If somebody did the same to her, would she not be justifiably upset? The fact is, even if Barbara DOES honestly believe she did nothing wrong, she is lying to herself. She wants to have sex with that guy, and she’s deceiving herself into believing that something she KNOWS is wrong is okay, using that “well, men want sex all the time, so it’s fine!” as a flimsy excuse.

And if she’s willing to lie to herself his time, do you really think she won’t just think up some other excuse next time?

Carl believes that the most reliable way to tell if a woman wants sex is if her pupils dilate, since that’s unconscious (it is a sign, but it can also be a sign of other things) and that if she says “no”, she’s probably just playing coy (some women do that, but not all). Unfortunately, he’s making out with a woman who does not believe in playing coy, and her pupils are dilating from fear.

Seriously? This guy’s almost as much of a monster as Abdul.

If he tries to tell you he actually believes any of that bullshit, he’s almost definitely lying to you. I suppose it’s theoretically possible that he’s lying to himself the same way Barbara was, but if he’s willing to accept rationalizations as flimsy as tat bullshit, he WILL accept any other rationalization, as long as it gets him what he wants.

Moreover, he doesn’t live in whatever backwater country Abdul lives in. The information you’re trying to educate him on is out there, available to him, and he is ignoring it. No matter how thoroughly you try to shove it down his throat, he will continue to ignore it.

Delilah believes that there is a hierarchy of sex acts, and that consent to a greater one implies consent to all lessor ones. For example, if someone’s agreed to fuck, it’s safe to assume a kiss is welcome. Specifically, she believes that tying someone up and caning his ass (which her boyfriend has invited her to do) is greater than fellating him (which in fact he’s not ok with at all). By the time she starts this, however, he’s too deep in subspace to safeword. He’s very angry afterwards.

This situation is not rape. The fact that you believe it is, is exactly why the flawed definition of the word rape that is being perpetuated by the “rape culture” meme is so dangerous. Not ONLY is it disrespectful to actual rape victims, but it shifts focus away from the real problem, and causes people to waste resources fighting situations like this, when people like Abdul and Carl, not to mention some of the worse people you describe in later examples, are still out there.

You’ve heard the story of the Boy Who Cried Wolf, right? That’s exactly what you’re doing here. People who perpetuate the “rape culture” meme are trying to sway people to their side by using our pre-existing hatred of the big, scary term “rape,” and implying that anyone who disagrees with them is somehow responsible for rape themselves, but in the end, all that is going to happen is that the word “rape” will start to lose its meaning, and rapists will be able to act with more and more impunity, while everyone around them is focused on people like Delilah, whose only mistake was having sex with someone she didn’t realize wasn’t responsible enough to be having sex in the first place.

Also, subspace? Seriously? I can figure out what that means from context, but do you have any idea how ridiculous that makes you sound? “I was raped because I was astrally projecting, and couldn’t follow my silver cord back to my body in time! Also, he used his psychic powers to disable me AND a Charm Person spell to make me think I wanted it at the time!”

Being in “subspace” is no excuse, and if you don’t have the presence of mind to at least remember a safe word, of all things, you should NOT be engaged in S&M play in the first place. And if you choose to anyway, it is NOT your partner’s fault if YOU choose not to speak up.

This is, incidentally, why the “victim blaming” meme is also bullshit. You’re telling me it’s better to accuse an innocent woman like Delilah of being a rapist, one of the absolute worst things a person can be, than to tell Mr. Subspace Idiot that he’s being irresponsible when, in fact, he is being irresponsible? Yes, it’s unfortunate that something happened to Mr. Subspace Idiot that he did not enjoy. Yes, he deserves to have his feelings acknowledged. No, of course he is not wrong to feel hurt. A person’s feelings are their own. But his FEELINGS do not make Delilah a rapist.

Erin believes that all men are a hair-trigger away from being rapists, and that resistance only makes them more likely to hurt her. She’s nervously starting to make out with her boyfriend when he places a hand on her breast, which she actually isn’t ok with. Feeling her tense, he asks “is this ok?”. Thinking “This is it, I’m being raped, just shut down and endure” she stammers “anything you want.” Too enthused at the invitation to recognize the incongruous tone of voice he proceeds to do many things to her while she lies there.

Again, this is not rape. I don’t see the need to go into any more detail about that in this one than I did in Delilah’s example.

I do have to wonder, though, WHY does Erin believe all men are a hair-trigger away from being rapists? Could it be that the “rape culture” meme has gotten her scared, exactly as I described in the previous example? Nah, couldn’t be…

This is EXACTLY the kind of mindset that the sort of “education” which rape culture proponents insist we all be force-fed perpetuates. And you’re trying to use this as an example of a situation which would be solved by education? This is a situation CAUSED by the very education you are proposing!

At the same time, if she knew how to defend herself, felt comfortable with her ability to defend herself, and more importantly, had developed the mindset that self-defense is her own responsibility and is always an option, she wouldn’t have needed to freeze up, and the situation never would have happened. This example does not support your point at all.

Faramir believes that all authority figures are automatically out to get him (for simplicity’s sake, this is not true). One day, one of his teachers demands sex from him. When she sees that he doesn’t talk to the principal or the police or anyone like that, she proceeds to do it over and over again. (He can’t get a weapon either, because he doesn’t want to go to jail for murder, and he doesn’t believe a court would have any sympathy for a self-defense claim coming from him.)

So it’s Faramir’s fault that his teacher is a monster? And this, coming from the side that is ALL ABOUT not blaming the victim?

This is yet another example of the “evil personified” individuals whom you claim are not responsible for most rapes.

Moreover, how is teaching Faramir about RAPE going to change his mind about all authority figures being out to get him? By your description, it sounds like he already knows that what is happening to him is rape.

On top of that, this is CERTAINLY not a situation in which self-defense would not help. Faramir might believe he would go to jail, but that doesn’t mean he WOULD. He would be perfectly justified in any self-defense claim that came up in court, and as long as his lawyer wasn’t a complete idiot, he would most likely win, as well. How, then, is this a situation where teaching him about rape would be more useful than teaching him to defend himself?

Everyone in Suaveville believes that sexual negotiations should be done subtly: a deniable brush of skin here, a half-second glance there. To actually come out and say “wanna fuck” would be crude and mood-killing (and dressing it up in fancier language wouldn’t help). With practice, it is possible to tell who’s interested in doing what with you, but everyone makes mistakes (in which case, it is acceptable to say “no” and “sorry” out loud). Gwen is a sociopath who doesn’t care about who she hurts but does care about getting caught. So she ignores all subtle stop signals. This lets her do a lot of unwelcome things briefly. Furthermore, she learns the signs of men who will freeze up when uncomfortable (this happens). With them, she does whatever she wants. If anyone accuses her of rape, she just says “I thought he was into it — he should have said something” and everyone writes it off as an honest mistake.

I have no clue what point you are even trying to make here. Gwen is going to continue to do what she does REGARDLESS of what people in Suaveville find acceptable. Even if Suaveville’s perfectly reasonable beliefs were to change, Gwen would STILL find a way to get what she wants without being caught.

Thinking that anything short of force is going to stop someone like Gwen is naive and stupid.

Hell, if worse comes to worse, she could just move to Haloville. Speaking of which…

Everyone in Haloville believes that people who are good in one way are probably good in most ways. In particular, anyone who creates great beauty cannot engage in great evil. Harry is a sociopath who doesn’t care about who he hurts but does care about getting caught. He is also a highly skilled artistic photographer. He routinely rapes his models secure in the knowledge that if they talk, he can rebut them by showing off his art.

Guess what?

HARRY ISN’T GOING TO STOP EITHER!!!

Trying to claim that, in either of these cases, these rapes are somehow caused by the beliefs of the community is pure, unadulterated bullshit. Rapists cause rape. Period.

The police in Idiotville are completely ignorant of rape-related forensics, or even of how to usefully question witnesses, so they are never able to prove anything beyond a reasonable doubt. Lots of sociopaths descend on the promise of safety from jail. (They do need to make sure their victims are unarmed, but it’s not too hard to figure out who is and isn’t.)

Provided Idiotville is in the US or another first world country, the resources they need to learn about rape-related forensics are at their disposal. The reason they are ignorant of them is because they are lazy. Education is not going to cure lazy.

Everyone in Liberalville believes that guns are evil, so they ban them, and lots of sociopaths descend on the promise of an unarmed population of victims. (They do need to fear police, but there are ways to avoid leaving evidence.)

Sure, you can shoot Abdul afterwards, but that doesn’t save the girl from rape or from AIDS. You can’t shoot him first, because you don’t know who he is — you’d have to shoot thousands of people, most of whom are innocent, to be confident of getting him. You might try announcing “anyone who rapes my daughter will get shot”, but that doesn’t scare Abdul, because he’s dying anyway. You could try to follow her around everywhere with your gun ready to shoot Abdul in the act, but you need to go to work and she needs to go to school.

Your best bet for keeping her safe is to teach Abdul the truth about AIDS. (Assume, just to make the metaphor work, that moving to a first world country is off the table.) Then he won’t rape her, because there’s no point and he knows it’s wrong.

Granted, he’ll break into your home, steal your jewelry, and sell it for AIDS drugs, but at least your daughter is safe. And that’s what matters.

Barbara and Carl:

I’ve read blogs by these people. I don’t have links handy, but they sound sincere. And the general rule of bad ideas is that somebody believes them.

Even you say that Barbara’s belief is a “perfectly logical conclusion to draw based on available evidence”. Now add that she’d be fine with sleep-time sex with *someone she wanted to have sex with*, which is pretty common, so she puts these ideas together to look at it from his perspective and it looks ok. Doesn’t require any great logical errors, just a typical mind fallacy combined with some incorrect generalizing. Still wrong. Still damaging.

And Carl’s belief doesn’t sound so far fetched when you read some PUA guides, or some accounts of coyness culture. Doesn’t help his victims.

If you want to claim that no one really believes these things, you’re going to need some pretty strong evidence.

Deliliah:

First, about subspace, it’s a state of mind that you can get into by hardcore kink in which the whole world becomes pretty fuzzy. The name comes from “submission”, but you can get there through pure pain-play as well. I’ve been there. It’s why scenes are negotiated ahead of time, and responsible tops don’t do things that weren’t discussed without a clear-headed yes. And, yes, if you *know* you tend to go into subspace pretty deep, you should warn your partner beforehand, but someone who doesn’t tend to can do it anyway.

But subspace isn’t key to this example. Maybe her bottom is clear-headed, but blindfolded and hasn’t received a blowjob before. So it takes a few moments for him to realize what’s happening. And then he does safeword, and she stops, but it was still wrong while it was happening.

Or instead of fellating it’s pegging. And he safewords after just one thrust. Is that ok?

Erin:

Spending a lot of effort deciding whether a specific case is an example of a general word is usually a sign of a wrong question. Let’s try to ask some right ones:

Is what happened to her bad enough that society should put some effort into preventing it? Yes. Read accounts of people who’ve been there, and many seem quite badly hurt.

Should we condemn her boyfriend? No. He acted within the bounds of reasonableness.

Should he have done better? Yes. He’s her boyfriend. He cares about her. People routinely put in more than reasonable effort to protect the people they care about. If he had *known* she had these issues, he would have been more careful, or would have helped her to overcome them before making out (or dumped her and found someone with less baggage).

Oh, and “I do have to wonder, though, WHY does Erin believe all men are a hair-trigger away from being rapists? Could it be that the “rape culture” meme has gotten her scared?” Yes. Of course. A specific variant of it, anyway. I thought that was obvious from what I wrote. But just because education has been done wrong doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try to do it right.

Faramir, Gwen and Harry:

In all three cases, you’re making a big deal about how evil the rapists are. Yes, they are. But, as HPMoR fans say, “that’s not how responsibility works.” Evil’s gonna evil — stopping the discussion there is like stepping off a cliff and blaming gravity.

Like in the Abdul case, imagine the victim is your child. Think about what you can do to *protect that child*. Everything else is secondary.

Unlike the Abdul case, these rapists are neither desperate nor delusional. A credible threat of catching and punishing them may be enough. But it has to be credible. They know how to get away with it, as things stand. And if a credible threat does not suffice, catching them after the first rape will at least save the future victims (assuming the punishment is sufficient to deny future opportunity, but in these cases that’s not hard).

You say “Gwen would STILL find a way to get what she wants without being caught.” But she’s not some kind of diabolical supergenius. She found *one trick* that works. Deny her that trick, and maybe she’ll find another, but maybe she’ll mess up trying out others and get caught, or maybe she’ll give up and go legit.

You’re fond of force, but you seem to have forgotten that force doesn’t help until you know whom to apply it to.

Idiotville:

You start with the police department you have. Then you build the one you want. Yes, they’re lazy. Not infinitely lazy, but lazy. Maybe they’re too lazy to learn, but if you go out and teach them they’ll do their jobs properly. Maybe they’ll never do the forensics right, but if you teach emergency room doctors to do it it’ll get done. Maybe you need to teach the mayor to expect more from the police department and fire the police chief. Multiple avenues of education with some real-world success history.

*****

As a more general note, I get the impression that you’ve looked at some badly-done examples of rape education and concluded that’s all that’s possible. I’m sorry if I’m misreading you on that. Each of my stories started with a specific subject someone was wrong or ignorant about. Those are the sort of things rape education should focus on correcting.

Before I get back into the specific examples, I’d like to say that I think we’re pretty much arguing past each other, rather than with each other.

Joe in PNG already basically said this, but I think it definitely bears repeating: There isn’t a single person on this thread who is arguing that education, in general, is useless or that we should stop trying to do it. Your argument seems to be “there are a lot of situations where education is useful in preventing rapes.” Not to make light of your argument or anything but, well, duh. That goes without saying. The thing is that this was never an argument that anyone needed to be convinced of.

This entire discussion came about over one issue. Miss Nevada said that the best way to prevent rapes on campus was for women to be aware of the problem, so that they could take steps to defend themselves. Then a bunch of morons went to twitter, as morons are wont to do, and started complaining about how wrong she was, and how the correct solution was to “teach men not to rape.” Larry then wrote a blog post explaining why thinking that you can teach men not to rape is naive idiocy, and that teaching women to defend themselves was more realistic and effective. Morons on twitter, incidentally, had a problem with that, too. Which brings us to where we are now.

The question everyone is discussing, then, would be “is thinking you can teach men not to rape naive idiocy?” By extension, we’re also asking, “is teaching women to defend themselves a better option?”

Saying that there are situations where education is useful is beside the point. We all know that. You also agreed with the counterpoint everyone else is is making; teaching people to defend themselves *IS* a form of education. But it’s not “teaching men not to rape.” You’ll note that in all of your examples, only Barbara’s involved teaching a rapist not to rape. That’s because what rape is, and the fact that it is wrong, is something we all already know, and unlike what pushers of the rape culture meme would have you believe, the few people who don’t already know this are a tiny fringe. As such, “teaching rapists not to rape” is, in fact, naive idiocy.

Incidentally, you are absolutely right about me: I have been exposed to some absolutely shitty examples of anti-rape training, and there are definitely better methods out there. The problem is that those shitty methods are the exact ones that Miss Nevada’s detractors are pushing, and the methods recommended by anyone pushing the rape culture meme will be similarly faulty, because they are attacking a problem that does not exist. (i.e. trying to eliminate “rape culture” rather than prevent rapes.)

But even though I think we’ve established that we don’t actually disagree on our main points, let’s tackle these specific examples again:

Abdul:

First off, I fail to see how he situation would be different if she were my daughter or anyone else’s. She’s still an innocent little girl who is being raped and (due to the AIDS) murdered. Whose daughter she is doesn’t change the facts of the situation.

That said, you’re absolutely right that Abdul’s ignorance is the root cause of this problem, and that it can be solved by education. But you’re ignoring everything I actually said about the situation in my previous post, which was that teaching Abdul “not to rape” would be utterly useless.

Additionally, how, precisely, am I supposed to go about teaching Abdul the truth about AIDS? If he is in the sort of position where he’d be willing to accept that sort of magical thinking in the first place, he certainly isn’t going to listen to reason. If one person tells him that’s not how AIDS works, and another tells him, “you never know, it MIGHT work,” who is he going to believe? The one that gives him a chance to live, obviously. No, it’s not simply AIDS that we need to teach him about, but basic biology, logic, and critical thinking. More importantly, as I said in my previous post, we need to teach him that “better evil than dead” is absolutely wrong. None of that involves teaching him anything about rape.

However, even with that said, you are completely wrong about the potential effectiveness of the steps I could take to protect my daughter. For one thing, we’ve established that Abdul is afraid of death. If he’s looking for victims, you can guarantee the last one he’ll pick will be the daughter of the crazy guy who constantly goes off about how thoroughly he will destroy anyone who messes with his daughter. Second, I can’t ALWAYS be there, obviously, but when I can, I can damn well be prepared. Third, even though my daughter is obviously no match for Abdul, I can do my best to teach her how to avoid becoming a target. There’s nothing I can teach her that will let her him off, but I CAN teach her to stay in well-lit public places and to be as loud as possible if a stranger tries to take her away. Finally, I have a daughter who is going to school in a part of the world where people actually believe sex with a virgin will cure AIDS? Rapists like Abdul are hardly going to be the only people targeting her. You can be damn sure that if I’m going to all the trouble of sending a girl to school in a country like that, where school for girls is a bigger sin than raping them to cure AIDS, I’ll damn well make time to escort her there. In fact, I’d even go so far to say that even though there’s virtually nothing I can do to teach Abdul the error of his ways, I’m ALREADY doing my part to fix this error, by teaching the next generation.

Barbara and Carl:

We’ve already established that Barbara can, theoretically, be educated. I’m still reluctant to give this one to you, though, because I don’t believe Barbara is WILLING to be educated. However if, like you say, she would be fine with somebody having sex with her while she’s unconscious too, then yeah, teaching her not to rape would have prevented this one. I have my doubts that she would actually be fine with that, though. If that’s the case, then she’s just lying to herself because she wants that guy, and will continue to do that no matter what you try to teach her.

Carl, on the other hand…

Sure, there might be SOME idiot out there who actually believes that pupil dilation thing, but there is probably somebody out there who believes that the sun is pulled across the sky by a flaming chariot, too. If you’re trying to argue that something as patently ridiculous as “pupils being dilated equals consent” is some sort of widespread belief then the burden of proof most certainly is not on me.

It sounds to me like you’re Othering people who listen to PUA guides because you just don’t like their methods. I can hardly blame you for that, but that doesn’t make them rapists, and you shouldn’t ignore the possibility that is what you’re doing. Seducing someone is not rape. Sure, there may be some PUAs out there that suggest pupil dilation is an indicator of sexual attraction, (which is pretty much bullshit; even if it is true, it can just as easily be an indicator of fear) but I don’t think there is anyone who would honestly say that pupil dilation equals consent. There may be people who SAY it, mind you, but there is no one who would say it honestly. Anybody who tells you that is bullshitting you, and belongs in the Gwen, Harry, and Faramir’s teacher category. They are NOT going to listen to anything you try to teach them.

Delilah:

Like I said, I was able to figure out what it meant from context. I didn’t mean to say that blaming the fact that the guy didn’t use his safeword on him being in “subspace” was ridiculous because it is a silly word, (though it is that, too) and certainly wasn’t trying to imply that you thought he was in some alternate dimension used for FTL communication. I said it was ridiculous because it’s ridiculous to call Delilah a rapist based simply on this idiot’s state of mind, and not something she did herself.

Erin:

So, asking if something is rape, in a conversation about rape and how to prevent rape, is asking the wrong question? Huh?

Sure, he wasn’t being a very good boyfriend. But that’s between him and Erin, not between me, you, Larry Correia, John Scalzi, or the public education system. But worrying about whether or not somebody is being a good boyfriend, while we’re trying to have a discussion about how best to prevent rape? That’s pretty much the DEFINITION of a “wrong question.”

I said numerous times in my previous post that muddying the definition of rape causes us to lose focus on the real problem. That is exactly what you’re doing here.

Incidentally, you’ve also ignored my assertion that if she felt confident in her ability to defend herself, she wouldn’t have NEEDED to feel afraid and give consent even though she secretly didn’t want to. I know you admitted earlier that self defense training counts as education, but like I said, we’ve been arguing at cross-purposes, and that was the point I was trying to establish from the beginning.

Faramir, Gwen, and Harry:

Here, unfortunately, is the part where you really go off the rails.

I don’t know or particularly care what some random Harry Potter fanfic community’s definition of responsibility is, and I might very well be misunderstanding the context of that quote, but if what you’re describing here is any indication, they’re the ones who don’t understand what responsibility is.

For one thing, as a side note, that bit about gravity is a terrible analogy. No one is saying you can’t stop people from falling off the cliff. They’re saying that you can’t stop gravity from being gravity. They’re also saying that if somebody just walks over the cliff like an idiot, it’s their own damn fault. More importantly, they’re saying that is somebody tries to push you off the cliff, you’d damn well better either get away or push him over first. In your analogy, what do the cliff and gravity even REPRESENT?

That’s beside the point, though. I just happen to hate a bad analogy.

The point is, though, that responsibility is something an individual takes, not a community. Trying to claim that a society like Suaveville or Haloville are responsible simply shifts responsibility away from the individuals who are actually at fault, or who can actually do something to stop a problem.

I’ve tried describing this way too many times over the course of these past few threads, so let me just quote myself from a discussion in the original “Naive Idiocy” post:

When we try to prevent rapes by teaching people about some hypothetical rape culture, (which doesn’t actually exist because our culture doesn’t actually condone rape, but that’s beside the point at the moment) whose mind are we trying to sway? I think we’ve already demonstrated pretty well throughout this conversation that most actual rapists already know what they’re doing is wrong, and educating them about rape culture won’t do a damn thing to change them. So, in that case, we’re trying to sway the innocent bystanders who they brag to, and who might then shame the actual rapists into changing their habits, right? That’s a good idea in theory, but there’s a few problems with how that actually plays out in real life.

First off, even if that did work, the people we are hoping they will shame into changing their ways are generally sociopaths, who won’t care that their peers are shaming them any more than they care about our attempts to teach them about rape culture personally. They just won’t brag about it as much, and won’t do it as openly openly anymore. The second, and more important problem is that in general the innocent bystanders know that what the rapists are doing is wrong TOO. Trying to teach them something they already know is just beating a dead horse. The reason they don’t speak up isn’t because they don’t realize what the rapists are doing is wrong, but because they are too apathetic to take action, which education about rape culture is unlikely to fix, or, more importantly, they are afraid of the rapists themselves. People commiting, and more importantly bragging about commiting rapes generally aren’t just sociopaths. They also tend to be charismatic sociopaths. Their charisma doesn’t only help them get women into the position where they can rape them in the first place, but also puts them in a position where challenging their actions in a social setting takes serious bravery. Teaching the people who might be able to stand up to them that rape is bad, something they already know, doesn’t help give them that bravery. Training people to defend themselves, on the other hand, can at least help people to develop bravery, even if it’s only the first step in that process.

The key to preventing rape isn’t to develop a culture which accepts that rape is bad. We already HAVE that culture. The key to preventing rapes is developing a culture where people take responsibility for their own actions and choices, whether it’s taking responsibility for their own personal defense, responsibility for the people they choose to associate with, responsibility to ensure they are getting consent before a sexual encounter, responsibility for standing up to bullies, or responsibility for standing up to rapists. Blaming society for the actions of rapists, as is done by the “rape culture” meme, is all about abdicating that responsibility. We need to develop a culture where taking responsibility for your own actions and choices is the highest virtue.

I’m not trying to say we should stop educating people about rape and consent. I’m sure there are some people out there who honestly don’t know what rape is, but in this day and age, they are few and far between. It’s not a particularly difficult concept to grasp, and this education is not going to solve the problem of rape. Miss Nevada’s suggestion, on the other hand, while hardly the “magic bullet” that will stop rape in it’s tracks, actually addresses the root of the problem. Developing the mindset that you are responsible for your own safety will not only help you fight off a rapist or make your lack of consent painfully obvious, but will also help you to develop a sense of responsibility in other areas of your life. And developing that sense of responsibility, my friends, is the closest we’ll ever come to truly solving the problem of rape.

Specifically, in the cases of both Suaveville and Haloville, you are misunderstanding the cause of the problem. It isn’t Suaveville’s stance on courtship proceedings that causes rape. It’s human nature, and people like Gwen. Changing Suaveville’s courtship rituals isn’t going to change human nature, and it isn’t going to change Gwen. Obviously that doesn’t mean you stop trying to prevent rapes, but you don’t try to stop them by addressing some unrelated social issue. Since you started this section out with a reference to a Harry Potter community, I think it’s only fitting to say that the way to stop them is through CONSTANT VIGILANCE.

In the case of Haloville, frankly, I reject the idea that they even believe the thing you are ascribing to them. Just look at the situation right now with Marion Zimmer Bradley. (which, obviously, is what you were referencing with Haloville in the first place, so let’s not beat around the bush) Do you really think there is ANYBODY in the SFWA who would agree with the statement, “anyone who creates great beauty cannot engage in great evil?” Of course not. It’s a patently ridiculous statement. That’s not what caused people to overlook her and her husband’s activities for so long. They overlooked it because of all the reasons I stated in my big long quote above. Fear, the personal charisma and connections of the people they’re accusing, tribalism, and maybe a bit of Geek Social Fallacy #1. Trying to fix Haloville’s “great beauty” problem is just tilting at windmills.

Also, a few specific statements I wanted to address:

You say “Gwen would STILL find a way to get what she wants without being caught.” But she’s not some kind of diabolical supergenius.

It doesn’t take a diabolical supergenius. If it did, there wouldn’t be nearly so many rapes in the world, now would there? Hell, if the only rationalizations they need to come up with are things like, “rape cures AIDS,” or “dilated pupils equal consent,” it obviously doesn’t take any kind of genius at all, diabolical or otherwise. All it takes is a rapist willing to rape.

You’re fond of force, but you seem to have forgotten that force doesn’t help until you know whom to apply it to.

I guarantee you that Faramir, Gwen’s victims, and Harry’s victims know damn well whom to apply it to. Besides, how does changing Suaveville or Haloville’s cultural practices help you find out who to apply it to, anyway?

The key to self defense isn’t the actual techniques, it’s developing the mindset that you are always responsible for your own safety. If we try to foster that mindset, we should be able to figure out who to apply it to when the time comes.

Finally, once again, what does it matter whose kid it is? It’s still an innocent in need of protection.

Idiotville:

You know what? I’ll give you Idiotville. If the police department doesn’t know how to do their job, it would be stupid not to try to train them.

It’s still not “teaching rapists not to rape,” though.

I also still don’t think this police department will be willing to learn, but that’s beside the point. One thing that’s worth pointing out, though: Even if the police department isn’t willing to learn, that doesn’t mean predators will go uncontested by default. We’ve been espousing the virtues of self-defense training this entire time, haven’t we? One of the favorite adages of self-defense proponents is “when second matter, the police are only minutes away.” It sounds like Idiotville is the kind of place where you would really need to take that to heart.

That’s all I’ve got for now. I stayed up way too late typing all this up. I could have SWORN I had some poignant note planned to go out on, too. :op

Another thing- how is education supposed to stop the person who gets turned on because something is “bad” and “wrong”?

That wasn’t one of my examples. I never said education could solve everything, only enough things to be worthwhile. Of course, the examples near the end (how educating the community can make it harder for rapists to hide) apply here too.

Can we achieve anything by educating those rapists? Maybe.

I don’t know how one comes to feel that way. My best guess is that it starts with the idea that good people have less sex, and virginity and saintliness go together, so sex is evil so evil is sexy. If so, we could prevent this turn on by stopping revering chastity. But that’s only a guess.

(It should be possible to gather more information. The first step would likely be interviewing some rather horrible people, and treating them with respect to keep them talking. I don’t think I’d have the stomach for that, but if anyone does, it would be a public service.)

Or if these people have some desire to be good, but succumb to temptation, maybe we could teach them how to use role play and consensual kink to get satisfaction without engaging in actual evil. This keeps the hunger fed and at bay.

Or, again on the succumbing to temptation model, we could teach value propagation, self-administered cognitive-behavioral therapy, or simple willpower enhancement exercises. These things might be useful for anyone.

(It should be possible to gather more information. The first step would likely be interviewing some rather horrible people, and treating them with respect to keep them talking. I don’t think I’d have the stomach for that, but if anyone does, it would be a public service.)

Incidentally, that’s exactly what Peter Grant did, which is kind of the whole point of this entire blog post.

We’ve tried education as a cure for drug abuse, drunk driving, littering, on and on. And while it may reduce some of the numbers, it doesn’t eradicate the problem.

And that brings us back to the crux of the matter, the original point that instead of teaching women to defend themselves, we should teach men not to rape. Even the most thorough education program cannot expiate the problem enough that women will not need to know how to defend themselves.

A point: Education never stopped drug abuse. But locking up someone for twenty for smoking a joint is much, much, much worse than smoking a joint, and education has done far more to stop illegal drug use than the “war on drugs”…And smoking joins and education have both done far less harm.

Point #2: I’ve never smoked a joint, and have no intention of doing so. That something is illegal is no excuse for cruel and usual punishment.

I don’t think I’m really understanding the point you’re trying to make regarding marijuana.

You’re absolutely right that the war on drugs is causing more problems than marijuana use itself causes, and that education is more useful in that situation than increasing police power. But nobody here is advocating increasing police power. We’re all advocating self-defense, and developing the mindset that nobody is responsible for your safety but yourself. That’s pretty much the exact opposite of increasing police power.

The question here isn’t education versus enforcement. It’s relying on other people to educate even more other people, versus taking responsibility for yourself. Even when we’re not talking about rape and are talking about something like drug abuse, it’s the difference between somebody who actually WANTS to quit versus somebody being told, “Drugs are bad, m’kay?”

Please read “Joe In PNG”‘s post again. He links education on drugs to “rape education” and a number of other things, thereby assigning, for example, an educational pamphlet on what marijuana actually does, to the same level of usefulness as an “educational” pamphlet intended to condescend and label approximately half the population as monsters.

Which may not be what he meant to do, but that is what he wrote.

Which is why I reiterated that education on drug use is helpful, and a “war on drugs” is not.

Which has nothing to do with the first half of your post, ie., self-defence. That’s just as irrelevant in this case.

Unless someone tries to jab a needle in your arm and force you to be addicted. So I’m really not sure where you’re going here.

And if your idea of educating people on illegal drugs is “Drugs are bad, don’t do them”, it’s no wonder you think it’s useless.

How about having a former addict up in front of the theoretical school audience, telling them what it’s really like in vivid detail?

That would also be far more useful than another seminar by a boring, bland person on why you shouldn’t bully.

“(It should be possible to gather more information. The first step would likely be interviewing some rather horrible people, and treating them with respect to keep them talking. I don’t think I’d have the stomach for that, but if anyone does, it would be a public service.)”

Hey, the sample of Walls Wires Bars Souls is free. And you’ll see he included exact conversations where convicts explain themselves, with only the names, dates, and places changed to protect the guilty and their victims.

If you want to know how they think, why they do what they do, and whether or not education will work… try the book. It’s a relatively inexpensive eductaion, at a safe distance from actual criminals. 🙂

I agree that we’re talking past eachother on the general philosophical point. I’m still a bit confused about where you stand, but that’s not very important.

On to practical matters. How do we stop evil people from committing rape? Presumably bullets will be involved at some point, but they alone are not sufficient.

Very few people will be willing to shoot a rapist if they expect to go to jail for murder for it.

If you shoot a rapist, you should expect the police to ask “was this really a rapist?”. And if they conclude no, the DA will ask the same, and if they conclude no, the jury will ask the same, and if they conclude no you’re going to jail. In most states, you only need to present the jury with clear and convincing evidence, not proof beyond a reasonable doubt, but good luck explaining that distinction to a jury.

Note that what gets the rapist shot is not the police/DA/jury *actually* reasoning sensibly, but the victim being *confident* they will. This means educating twice. (And both have to be done well. Some of the current “rape culture” education probably makes the situation *worse* by making victims who could fight back unnecessarily fearful of that reasoning. But the solution to bad education is good education, not no education.)

Incidentally, Haloville was not inspired by MZB (though that case seems similar), but by the somewhat less famous Terry Richardson. In his case, NYMag helpfully titled an article “Is Terry Richardson an Artist or a Predator?” Take a moment to consider the mindset from which that headline makes *any sense whatsoever*.

The halo effect isn’t something people come out and say they believe in — it’s something that they use to construct expectations when they don’t remind themselves not to. That’s how cognitive biases work. This one’s pretty well documented.

Regarding the community, you said:

[T]he innocent bystanders know that what the rapists are doing is wrong TOO. … The reason they don’t speak up isn’t because they don’t realize what the rapists are doing is wrong, but because they are too apathetic to take action, which education about rape culture is unlikely to fix, or, more importantly, they are afraid of the rapists themselves.

Apathy and fear are real, but I bet confusion is more common. For people who didn’t see it themselves, or didn’t see everything themselves, it’s easy to say “but surely that person couldn’t be a rapist”.

Educating the community on how to think about rape, or at least how not to, *enables* victims to stand up for themselves.

It even works without violence. Just going public with the stories seems to have shut down Terry Richardson. But a lot of victims kept quiet before one went public, because they were afraid of how a halo-bias-affected community would respond to them.

So that’s where educating the community comes in.

Now let’s jump tracks completely and talk about Delilah. Once again, forget about subspace. It’s a distraction and I regret mentioning it. Let’s just say that once he realizes what’s happening, he tells her to stop and she does. Are you claiming that would be ok?

If so, consider another hypothetical. We’ll call this one Zarquon. Zarquon is not intended to be particularly believable — he’s just a reduction to absurdity.

Zarquon believes everyone really wants to be fucked in the ass. So one day he sneaks up behind you, pulls your pants down and starts thrusting. “What the fuck?” you exclaim, trying to pull away. “Just some surprise sex,” he answers calmly, still thrusting. “Well, stop!” you say. “OK” he says, pulls out, and pulls your pants back up.

I doubt you’ll say that’s ok.

Zarquon and Delilah are pretty similar. They have a sincere but unreasonable and mistaken belief in consent, and stop when their error is pointed out. I maintain that neither of them is ok, and that it would be useful to teach them this (well, to teach Delilah this; Zarquon may be too crazy, but that doesn’t matter because Delilah’s the realistic one). Do you see an important difference between them?

I hadn’t thought it was possible for the metaphors to get even more absurd, but clearly I was wrong on that score. At least you recognize that it’s absurd, which is progress I suppose, but it really doesn’t help to illustrate your point. Unless your point is you’re continuing to miss the point.

Leaving aside Zarquod’s apparent ability to move at superspeed, unless he arrived yesterday from another planet, he knows perfectly well that being sodomized is not universally welcome. In fact, he knows perfectly well that, absent some prior arrangement with that individual, simply walking up and poking yourself into any orifice is wrong. Current levels of education make this quite clear, and being told again isn’t likely to magically suddenly convince him that he has to forgo his idea of fun. If he actually ‘sincerely believes’ otherwise, then his detachment from reality has reached the level of psychosis.

The vast majority of rapists know perfectly well rape is not acceptable behavior and they do it anyway. They need to be put in prison. The ones who ‘sincerely believe’ it’s okay need to be put in asylums.

“The vast majority of rapists know perfectly well rape is not acceptable behavior and they do it anyway. They need to be put in prison. The ones who ‘sincerely believe’ it’s okay need to be put in asylums.”

Thanks, I’m saving that. Better brief summation than anything I came up with 🙂

*laughing* I’ve been told that the SJWs are running around on blogs I’m not on or reading, declaring that I blame rape victims. I’m sure they’re having lots of fun making stuff up that I never said. In the meantime, I spent the day having a very nice nap, and made delicious food for my household.

I’m sorry his presence benighted your blog. I had a look and geez he posted a lot. Then again, this is a stalker troll who went over to someone else’s blog and said that I should be put in my place.

Given that I have documented his own creepy sexualized obsession with me (Where he conflates a friend living with me and my husband to my having ‘spread her legs for another man’) I think it’s not too far of a stretch to understand that he wishes that I were beaten and raped to be put in my place.

Also, since Larry banned yamamanama/clamps/alauda/Will de Fey/he of many sockpuppets for being a wannabe rapist, he can’t rage on this blog any more.

I’m not sure why he conflates me with Vox Day lately. Then again it’s entirely possible he’s bypassed LJ’s security again and read a discussion I had there where Vox was mentioned. That was a few months ago though.

It sounds exactly like Clamps, thus I would not be surprised if it were him. Especially if he’s proxied to attempt bypass bans.

This is the guy who has really disgusting, inappropriate sexual thoughts about me, feels I should be put in my place, and I’ve documented it all in a nice warning post about this deranged piece of work.

@Wes S: He’s finally a prime, shining example of something, he should be proud!

I should reiterate that I don’t think Coconut there is Clamps, though I did think it before, given his initial comment. Clamps is categorically incapable of poking fun at himself/ self-depreciating humor OR admitting a mistake.

There’s really not much point in discussing rape until the meaning of that word gets solidified and standardized in some kind of way such that anyone can identify it by and distinguish it from other things by a threshold, a preponderance of indicative components, a structure, a sequence, a signature, or somehow that yields consistent or repeatable results within some confidence level. If your definition has grey areas then expect your method to fail a lot in those grey areas. If your definition is sufficiently mutable then whatever results will be arbitrary and capricious.

And then you have to wonder about people (not just women of course) who know they’re too uptight and/or socially awkward to successfully pull off a one night stand (or even casual flirtation) and *intentionally* drink enough to lower their inhibitions so they have a better chance of getting some.

And I’m not sure sex is even required in some definitions. Or an attempt at sex. Or an attempt at something contextually associated with sex.

Then you have to define what is sexual intent. Or a rapist’s intent.

Then there are people who seem to be taken very seriously, who claim that the motive for rape is domination not sex so that broadens things even more.

Then you have those who claim that contributing to rapes (including those unreported) somehow indirectly by not fighting them hard enough by agreeing with the and supporting the “antirape” speaker is essentially rape by accessory or tacit toleration of it. (And if you ask me that whole ‘not outraged properly/enough = complicit’ thing is starting to sound awfully coercive and dominating.)

People wanted a cartoon mascot of the face of a husky dog altered because someone thought it looked like it had threatening eyes, the eyes of a rapist.

Then we have ridiculous presumptions like males can’t be raped by definition (presuming that males never feel intimidated) or how 13 year old males probably like being “seduced” by their 38 year old piano teacher and certainly aren’t harmed by it.

The feds didn’t even track rape of males until 2012. Prior to that, any rape statistics from localities that included males as victims was automatically thrown out. And when the change to the Federal tracking was made, they had to simultaneously create a new rape category – “forced to penetrate”.

While male on male rape makes up a sizeable minority of rape cases where males are victims, female on male rape makes up the majority. And the culture as a whole often has a hard time accepting the idea that a female forcing herself on a resisting male is a Bad Thing(tm).

The alcohol thing can be taken a step further, if you really want to have fun.

Alcohol impairment depends on the amount in the brain. The amount in the brain varies somewhat in regard to BAC. BAC varies with regard to alcohol ingested. These variations change from person to person, and are influenced by drinking history and inherited factors.

So, what is drunkenness as far as consent is concerned? Where do you set the threshold?

Certain approaches seem to assume setting the thresholds at one extreme, which in this case implies that someone who had even a partial glass of wine cannot be considered a consenting partner.

A problem with this is the ‘romantic dinner with wine’, a very common trope for showing relations between a man and a woman in film, books, and so forth. Under the above standard, these are all depictions of mutual rape, many presented positively, hence part of the whole promotion of rape culture thing.

How are folks who grew up thinking this was a part of romantic life supposed to handle it? Get a Breathalyzer and wait a period of time after eating?

Just a day or so ago I mentioned how these oddball QUILTBAGs keep using this thing called the “missing stair” analogy and how every time they do it they link you to this “Pervocracy” page which descends into some truly foul bondage and masochism stuff. I mean some really crazy shit.

Well, they’ve done it again – today! This time – incredibly – by the woman supposedly most against the MZB allegations of child-rape:

This …community… for BSDM or sex positivity ( both? I honestly… can’t tell right now because my brain is still stopped on this one thing:) Tolerated a rapist and everyone knew about him and only ‘ostracized’ him?! AFTER he abused several other women

And didn’t report it…

Reading through the rest… oi. *doublefacepalm* CONTINUING WHEN SOMEONE SAYS THE SAFEWORD IS RAPE. No ifs, buts or maybes about it. I’m …arrrrrrgh~!

Not reporting because it puts the BSDM scene at risk… is what will make the scene even riskier! I’m not a part of these scenes in any way, but even I can understand that it’s basically letting the predators have a very good hunting grounds.

I read that stuff a long time ago cuz QUILTBAGs are always linking to it and using the phrase “missing stair.” It’s so nuts I don’t want to quote the stuff. But “fireplay and bloodplay”? Who knew there were such nuthatches? And organized into group meetings and conventions. Just… WOW.

The same rationale was used against the masseuse that Al Gore attempted to solicit for prostitution. When she told her friends about the incident after the fact, they encouraged her to keep silent because going public with what had happened would damage the cause.

Here is the way intersectional QUILTBAG principles work: several tens of millions of Americans using a common vulgar slang is an expression of women-hatred and enables a casual attitude that results in “rape culture” which leads to rape.

Giving a lifetime achievement award to a man who supports an organization like NAMBLA which advocates the institutionalization of what is now statutory child rape and pedophilia is mom and apple pie.

Giving paranoid anti-white Guest of Honor speeches that calls for a virtual race war is supported whole-heartedly by intersectionalists.

Intersectionals having a racially segregated convention room and dinner is necessary, noble and justified.

A whites-only high-school prom is racism.

Conclusion: QUILTBAGS have either no understanding of or no use for the basis of all law. The QUILTBAG moral ethos is based on what you were at birth. It is a version of John Scalzi’s “Straight White Male: The Lowest Difficulty Setting There Is”:

Except in this case, if you’re ethnic European, heterosexual and male, you are held to the most hysterically stringent moral standard.

If you are “Intersectional” Johnny Scalzi’s provisional opposite, the non-white, gay, female, you are held to a moral standard whose threshold is much lower, even including outright and direct expressions of depravity and racism.

“I have reached a conclusion, therefore the conclusion is right.” -> “The conclusion is right, therefore I am right.” -> “If I am right and the conclusion is right, anyone who opposes me is wrong.” -> “Therefore, anyone who opposes me supports the enemy.” -> “Therefore, anyone who opposes me is the enemy.”

There are a few key flaws in this line of argument. The most subtle is the infallibility assumption.

I’ve seen that exact same line of thought used in debates on tabletop role-playing games, BTW.

Only substitute “bigoted” with “roll-player” and “white male” with “gamist”. Although using “gamist” as an insult has lost a lot of traction.

Larry, I know you don’t need anyone to defend you or give affirmation to your beliefs but I just want to say keep fighting the good fight. Speak up and let the worms crawl back into their holes. Sometimes it just seems so draining having to constantly struggle with these osmotic personalities that cannot or will not attain the ability to think for themselves.

I cannot abide the constant preaching of victim mentality. I bought one of the first run of your Molon Labe hats and shirts back in TFLs heyday. Don’t let those weenies get to you.